Looking to start your own blog but have no or short of cash? or have no or minimal knowledge of Programming languages? or you can’t figure out how to choose the best blogging platform? Since there are several different blogging platforms out there. All you need to find out which one is right for you? In this article, we’ll help you choose the best blogging platform by going over the pros and cons of the most popular options. These are the free best blogging platform available today.
Now, How to choose The Best Blogging Platform – What to Look for?
Before start, you need to think on the following
- For a Best Blogging Platform what you’re looking for
- easy to set up.
- doesn’t require any coding skills.
- You’ll also need to think about what kind of blog you want to create, now and in the future.
- As your blog grows, you may want to change the look of your site and add more features for your growing audience. That means it’s important to choose a blogging platform that’s flexible, with room to grow. As Starting off with the wrong platform can make it very difficult to switch later on.
- During start, if you don’t have plans to make money yet, it’s smart to make sure you have the option to do so in the future.
With all that in mind, let’s compare the best blogging platforms for beginners.
Here are the blogging platforms we’ll be comparing in this article. If you’re interested in a particular platform, you can click the link to skip ahead in the article.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog hosting service. Acquired by Google in 2003, it offers a quick and easy way to create a blog for non-tech-savvy users.
Pros
- Blogger is free.
- It’s easy to use and manage without any technical skills.
- Has the added advantage of Google’s robust secure platform and reliability.
Cons
- You’re limited to basic blogging tools and can’t add new features as your blog grows in popularity.
- Design options are limited, with fewer templates available. Third-party templates for Blogger are often low quality.
- Blogger does not receive frequent updates or new features.
- Google can suspend your blog at any time, or even cancel the Blogger service altogether. (They have a history of abandoning projects without warning, such as Feedburner.)
Contentful
No one knows how they’re going to want to display their articles a few years down the line, so Contentful provides a way to separate your content from your design. It calls this an “API-first” approach, so your content is stored on their servers and you can call it into any design or platform as you like. So if you want to build a completely different site in a few years time, it’s easy to bring everything in as it’s set up to be portable from the start.
Ghost
Ghost is a minimalist blogging platform with limited features focused on writing blog posts. It’s available as a hosted platform, and also as a software that you can install and host yourself. We’ll take a look at both options.
Pros
- Focused on blogging and writing.
- Clean, clutter-free, and intuitive user interface.
- Written in JavaScript, so it’s super fast.
- No setup required for the hosted version.
Cons
- Not easy to customize with apps.
- The simplified user interface means options are very limited.
- Not enough themes to change the appearance of your site.
- Complicated setup if you install it yourself.
Pricing
The self-hosted version needs a custom domain (about $14.99/year) and web hosting (starting from about $7.99/month). Pricing for the hosted version starts at $19/month for 1 blog with a 25000-page view limit.
Jekyll
Jekyll takes your raw text files, which may be written in Markdown, if you like, and turns them into a robust static site to host wherever you want. It’s the engine behind GitHub Pages, which means you can host your blog on there for free.
Making your blog with Jekyll avoids the need to work with technicalities such as databases, upgrades and so on, so there are fewer things to go wrong, and you can build something completely from scratch.
LiveJournal
One of the veterans of this list, LiveJournal (like Blogger) started life in 1999. Perhaps because of its age, it rather blurs the lines (the site says “willfully”) between blogging and social networking.
The result is more of a community that affords you your own space, but that also very much encourages communal interaction. It is possible to fashion something more private but to get the most out of LiveJournal, you need to be prepared to delve into a discussion as much as writing.
Medium
Launched in 2012, Medium has grown into a community of writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts. It is an easy-to-use blogging platform with limited social networking features.
Pros
- Medium is easy to use, with no setup required and no coding skills needed.
- It allows you to reach an existing online community of people with similar interests.
- You can focus solely on writing, instead of designing a website.
Cons
- Features are very limited in terms of design or building a brand.
- Medium owns your audience, so losing your blog means losing all your followers.
- You cannot run your own ads to make money.
Pricing
Medium is free to use.
While the platform looks attractive at first, the lack of monetization and control leads to most people switching from Medium to WordPress.
Pen.io
Pen.io’s approach is also rather different from its contemporaries. Unusually, it doesn’t require a login — instead, you define a URL for a post and set a password.
Images can be dragged into place, and you can create multi-page posts using a tag. And that’s about it.
Really, it’s a stretch to call Pen.io a blog in the traditional sense, but it’s a decent option for banging out the odd sporadic post, especially if you don’t want any personal info stored.
Postach.io
Postach.io claims it’s the “easiest way to blog”. It’s from the people behind Evernote, and, naturally, is deeply integrated into their system.
Essentially, you just connect a notebook to Postach.io and then tag notes as ‘published’ to make them public.
However, you get some customization, too, including a bunch of themes, the means to embed content from other sites, Disqus comments, and the option to instead use Dropbox for storing content.
Squarespace
Squarespace is a website building service that allows you to create beautiful websites using easy drag and drop tools.
It focuses on small business owners who are looking for an easy way to create an online presence.
Pros
- Squarespace is simple and easy to use for beginners who aren’t very tech-savvy.
- It has beautiful professionally designed templates.
- It separately offers domain name with SSL/HTTPs and eCommerce stores.
Cons
- Squarespace is limited to the features built into their proprietary platform.
- The Personal plan limits you to 20 pages, a blog, and 2 contributors.
- Integrations are limited to a select few services and tools.
Pricing
Pricing for their Personal plan starts at $16/month, or $12/month if you pay for the year in advance. For the Business plan, pricing starts at $26/month, or $18/month billed annually.
Often users end up switching from Squarespace to WordPress to minimize their expenses and add more features on their websites.
Svbtle
Describing itself as a “blogging platform designed to help you think”, Svbtle is fairly similar to Medium in approach. It again strips everything right back, resulting in a bold, stylish experience that pushes words to the fore. It could easily become your favorite blogging platform for the act of writing, but it again relies on you also wanting something extremely simple and not caring a jot about customization.
Tumblr
Tumblr is a little different than other blogging platforms. It is a microblogging platform with social networking features including following other blogs, reblogging, built-in sharing tools, and more.
Pros
- Tumblr is free and very easy to use.
- It has an integrated social media component.
- As a microblogging tool, Tumblr makes it easy to quickly blog videos, GIFs, images, and audio formats.
Cons
- Tumblr comes with a limited set of features that you cannot extend as your blog grows.
- There are many themes available for Tumblr, but they can’t offer additional features.
- Backing up your Tumblr blog or importing it to other platforms is difficult.
Pricing
Tumblr is free to use. You can use a custom domain (purchased separately) for your Tumblr blog, and there are also third party themes and apps available to purchase.
Weebly
Weebly is a hosted platform that allows you to build your website using drag and drop tools. It comes with dozens of ready-to-use themes that you can customize using their web-based interface.
Pros
- Easy-to-use drag and drop website builder with no technical skills required.
- Quick and easy setup, since Weebly will host your site for you.
- Weebly’s free plan allows you to try out the service before buying.
Cons
- Built-in features are limited, and you can’t add new features.
- Limited integration with third party platforms.
- Exporting your site from Weebly to another platform is difficult.
Pricing
Weebly’s paid plans start from $8.00/month and include limited features. To unlock all the available features, you could pay up to $49.00/month.
Wix
Wix is a hosted platform to build websites. It offers an easy way for small businesses to build a website using drag and drop tools. You can also add a blog to your website by adding the Wix Blog app.
Pros
- You can customize your site using dozens of templates and third-party apps.
- Build your site with easy drag and drop tools; no coding skills required.
- Setup is quick and easy.
Cons
- The free account is limited and shows Wix branding and ads on your site.
- Free third-party apps are limited.
- Once you choose a template you cannot change it.
- E-commerce features are limited to paid plans, and even those features are limited.
Pricing
The basic Wix website builder is free. You can add a custom domain for $4.50/month. Their premium plans start from $8.50/month and go up to $24.50/month.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a blog hosting service offered by Automattic, a company created by WordPress.org co-founder Matt Mullenweg. It offers a basic blog hosting service for free. You can purchase additional options like a custom domain name, additional storage, and other premium services.
Pros
- No setup required.
- Easy to use and manage.
Cons
- Limited options to extend your site.
- You cannot run advertisements on your blog.
- You do not own your blog and WordPress.com can suspend your account if they find you are violating their terms of service.
Price
The basic WordPress.com account is free, but it will have WordPress.com ads and branding. You can upgrade to their Personal plan for $2.99/month (billed yearly) to remove WordPress.com logo and advertising from your website, and get a custom domain (such as www.yoursite.com).
For $8.25/month (billed yearly) you can get additional design tools and extra storage.
Because of the similarity in names, beginners often start with WordPress.com thinking they are getting the powerful WordPress.org software. After seeing the limitations, users often end up switching from WordPress.com to WordPress.org to have more features and control over their website.
We believe that WordPress is the best blogging platform and outperforms all other platforms. It is powerful, easy to use, affordable, and the most flexible of all available blogging platform. Here are all the reasons why you should use WordPress and what it is the best blogging platform.
We hope this article helped you choose the best blogging platform for your next blog. If you’re ready to get started blogging with WordPress, then head over to our step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog in our android application.
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